My college application essay:

I don’t really share many meals with my biological family, and those that I do are always slightly odd events, the food less important then the gossip and rumors that flit down the table. I always sit next to my brother Jamie with his absurd haircut, shoving him under the table to prevent one of the foul jokes of which he is so proud. My parents and I engage in lively, good-natured debate while my sister Tessa slips scraps of meat to the dogs hiding under the table. These dinners are rare, because I have spent most of my teens sharing meals with other families.
Meals at boarding schools in Britain were devoured rather than eaten—the dining room a scene from a Dickensian poorhouse. We were united against gross custards and strange lumps of uniform meat. Despite the hassle I received in the dorms, I could join in the laughter as the tiny Welsh boy Alex did his “grease test” on the raggedy hamburgers. After scraping our plates into the slop bucket, we would leave the hall and cast of the brotherhood that only existed around mealtimes.
I found my first real family away from home at Shackleton, an expeditionary high school whose staff and students became closer to me than I originally thought possible. I remember clutching wonderfully warm soup bowls with Andy and Luke—the wind and rain buffeting our flimsy tent perched high in the mountains of Southern Maine. My crewmate Kayla was cutting cheese with a blunt knife as our white bus tortoised along the freeway towards Mexico, both of us waving to passing motorists with hands full of cheesy crackers. These were my schoolmates, who, through the years, became my brothers and sisters.
And now things are even more spontaneous, my base camp in Boston replaced by international travel and independent learning expeditions. My family has expanded to include backpackers from Europe and educators from Outward Bound. There was my tutor Simon, teaching me to eat spicy noodles with chopsticks while a gaggle of local girls titter from behind a hut. With any meal he was the connoisseur, asking for strange concoctions with a nasal twang he had been developing in Asia. Behind us loomed the temples of Angkor, or the rice paddies of Laos stretching into oblivion. Sometimes children accompanied us as we ate, from the orphan girls who drew water at the well to amputee Sorey who could hold chopsticks with his stumps, I soon regarded them as my own.
A typical meal for me is one where I see new faces. My family has increased over the years to encompass many more people: educators and students, hills tribesmen and society girls, firemen and organic farmers. Every one of them invites me to their table and regards me as one of the family. People often ask me how I cope with seeing my family infrequently. I learned to love others and regard them as an extension of my own bloodline.